BABYLON 5 Returns!!

I've checked around the Internets, and have found little (or no) reference to the news conveyed through the messages below. But this is definitely worth sharing, so here you go...

During last weekend's San Diego Comic Con...at a panel that (evidently) didn't enjoy the "in your face" notoriety of, say, TRANSFORMERS or SPIDERMAN 3... producer/writer/director J. Michael Straczynski (JMS, or "Joe") made an announcement regarding the future of this little concept he has called BABYLON 5.

The thrust of the news is this: straight-to-video BABYLON 5 adventures...involving B5 characters in an anthology format...should arrive late next year. Written and directed by JMS.

Personally, I would love, love, LOVE to see some well-considered B5 adventures. For me, the show stands behind only the original STAR TREK in the pantheon of orgasmically kick ass TV/SF (with STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE and the current BATTLESTAR GALACTICA vying for 3rd).

The franchise's "universe" is certainly rich enough...and broad enough...to accommodate this undertaking. The only thing that worries me about this is that CRUSADE and LEGEND OF THE RANGERS (both B5 spinoffs for TV) felt unpleasantly self-aware and forced. Given that so much time has passed since their production, perhaps Joe can now step into the universe with heightened detachment and clarity: the potential for greatness here boggles the mind.

B5 is clearly a labor of love for JMS -- it is clearly an undying and deeply personal committment. Don't see that too much in either television or film these days. It's nice to know that passion can pay off. For fans, and for Joe.

Here's The Nuclear Marine with a write-up from JMS' panel. There's a lot of material here - about other JMS projects (films, comics, etc.)- including a hint about major BABYLON 5-based game. A lot if interesting stuff, although I've highlighted the B5-specific content in blue for those wanting to cut to the chase.

The Nuclear Marine wrote...

Last week on the moderated newsgroup for Babylon 5, J.
Michael Straczynski (jms) hinted at a big Babylon 5
announcement. Even without that, I was going to attend the
panel. The panel occurred on Saturday, 22 July. Heres a
breakdown on the information jms said was on the horizon.

As already reported on AICN, jms sold a movie script to be
directed by Ron Howard presently called Changling. To
show how small Hollywood can be, jms called Ron Howard
Mr. Howard in a conversation about the script. Ron said
No, you hired my dad to be on your show [Babylon 5], you
can call me Ron. Despite working consistently in Hollywood
as a scriptwriter and producer for 20 years, this large deal
made jms an overnight star in the minds of corporate. It may
be this single event launching many of these other events.

Jms has produced a 12 episode radio program for the
Canadian Broadcasting Company called The Adventures of
Apocalypse Al. Jms described it as a science fiction comedy
in the vein of Hitchhikers Guide.

Touchstone will be producing a pilot that was pitched last year
called Borrowed Lives. He did not go into details about this
series.

The comic book Rising Stars will be developed as a series
by Sam Raimis production company. This has me very
excited as I enjoy jmss take on the Super Hero genre. Even
with Heroes and 4400 in production, I think Rising Stars
can rise to the top.

Two unnamed studios are currently bidding on the (movie?)
rights to the Midnight Nation book. Midnight Nation is a
stellar graphic novel. I hope this one comes through.

The one shot comic Dream Police has been pitched to a
major studio. Negotiations are ongoing to determine of jms
will write the script. I was not impressed with Dream Police.
It played exactly like a Dragnet of the Dreamworld, so others
may like it.

The biggest announcement I'll paraphrase: Every 6 months, I
get together with WB to discuss what to do something with
B5. The DVD sales have raised over 500 million in revenue.
Now, I produced B5s 110 episodes at about 90 million
dollars. Somehow, B5 is still 50 million in the red. Every time
I mention that to WB they say We made a good deal, huh?
Anyway, they asked if I wanted to do a feature film but I
declined mainly because I can't yet picture structuring a B5
movie as long as [Andreas Katsulas] and [Richard Biggs]
insist on staying dead. Maybe in a year or two I'll be able to
but right now I can't do something big and those two roles will
NOT be recast.

So I thought about it, and I suggested a bunch of short films.
Little mini-movies or an anthology show set in the Babylon 5
universe. I pick a character and develop an hour-long story
around that character. Stories that I wanted to tell during the
B5 series but never had the chance to develop. They said,
Okay. I said I wanted complete creative control. Do not
change my words that I write, and I want that in writing. They
said, Okay. And I want to direct. They said, Okay.

This project was green lit less than two weeks ago. Its going
to happen. Production starts in September in Vancouver,
Canada. Post-production will occur from October to February
with a release of the first three anthologies in the second
quarter of 2007.

In the comic book world, jms will be doing Bullet Points, a
six-issue Marvel tale concerning the impact one bullet and one
death can have on the Marvel Universe. Jms describes that the
bullet that killed the scientist that gave Steve Rogers the super
soldier serum. He has the scientist killed just 24 hours earlier.
The bullet that killed the scientist also killed a young MP by
the name of Ben Parker. The issues cover the sixty years
after that event. Sounds like a macro What If, but the idea of
Ben Parker dying in WWII brings a big OOOHHH! from
the audience. Jms will also be doing something about a guy
with a hammer (come on, we know its Thor).

During the question and answer portion of the panel, not too
much was revealed. There are two enticing tid-bits. Jms had a
conversation with a director. The director really wants to get
into doing television (ironic as jms started doing television to
get into comics). So they developed an idea for a television
show thats never been thought of before. Jms refused to
mention the director, but he said the director is one of the top
five directors today. For some reason Im thinking M. Night
Shyamalan, but it could just as easily be Ron Howard.

The other tidbit dealt with the question will there be a B5
computer game soon? Jms said he could not talk about it
now, but that in two weeks expect something big to be
announced. He hinted that if you ever wanted to live in the B5
universe, you might get your chance. Now, either thats a
super holobrothel or a MMORPG. Im hoping for the former.

Lastly, he may have single handedly changed the mindset
about Print on Demand Publishing. Originally, print on
demand was a way for anyone to print a book for like 5 of
their friends to read. No one serious would have used it. For
the last year, jms has been selling collections of his Babylon 5
scripts on www.babylon5scripts.com via cafepress website.
That deal has made cafepress over a million dollars thus far.
Due to the success, other authors are looking into using print
on demand.

This was an enjoyable panel with LOTS of information put
out. Jms, despite describing himself as having a fear of
talking in front of people, handles himself well in front of a
crowd. Never Surrender Dreams.

Thanks a ton for the write-up Nuclear Marine!

Big Ed from Texas with a reiteration of the B5 news; this message states A TITLE!

J. Michael Straczynski announced a new Babylon 5 project.

It's called
Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.

It will be a direct to dvd collection of 20
minutes stories set in the b5 universe that will feature the prominent
characters.

These stories will expand on the characters that were previously
established. The only character he mentioned would not be covered would be
G'Kar since he believes no one should ever voice G'Kar except for Andreas
Katsulas, who passed away earlier this year.

Warner Bros has greenlit the
project and he says production starts this September, hoping for a DVD
release in the second quarter of next year.

Thanks to you, as well Big Ed. Appreciated.

Obviously, JMS in general...especially further BABYLON 5 projects...will be sources of great interest it the Geek community. We'll keep you apprised as more information comes in.

Every attempt to spin off the B5 universe since 1999 has fallen through, and with major cast members dying in the interim it was starting to look like the whole thing was cursed.. This is the coolest news I&#39;ve heard for years!!! And I totally agree with all the sentiments in the article above - historically AICN doesn&#39;t have a great reputation for covering B5, and the above has restored my faith a bit. Oh, and the talkbackers above are morons.

If you go the the SEARCH ENGINES on the sidebars, and type in either Babylon, Babylon 5, Crusade, or Glen, you&#39;ll find that AICN&#39;s history of covering B5 has actually been extensive and detailed. AICN was on the front lines during the CRUSADE woes, for example. Pretty good stuff.

I dont hate babylon 5. I just dont care. You want a nail biting, gripping edge of your seat version of what babylon 5 was trying to achieve? I recommend THE NEWS. CNN, CBS, ABC, FOX, BBC. I dont care. But there&#39;s some heavy shit going on. In the current 5 year story arc, muslims smashed planes into buildings 5 years ago (as payback for some guys who apparently have some beachfront property they want back or something...)causing a global shit storm that just this week involves an evil zealot building a doomsday device, and the US client state at war with the evil zealots client state. For sweeps week, I hear they are going with a sub-plot called "World War 3". Sorry - I shoulda wrote &#39;spoiler&#39; up there.

and find something to like in it. Any. For Christ&#39;s sake, I liked the show Otherworld that was on for like two weeks in the 80&#39;s. But I&#39;ve got to say ... Babylon 5 sucked. It sucked long, and it sucked hard. It was as exciting as watching an account balance the books. I have no idea what the fascination on this site with that show is.

Granted I didn&#39;t watch it, but the episodes I did catch really left me cold. Like ice cold. Back in the day it was well known the major difference between star trek and Babylon 5 was star trek was about evolution and Babylon 5 was about creation. Star Trek sold it much better. Although, it&#39;s no secret Deep space nine&#39;s premise was stolen from the creator of Babylon 5. But we all know Berman is a cock head.

The vibration produced from the vocal chords of Captian John Sheridan as he gives a badass pre-battle speech would END Kirk before he would even have a chance to hear the whole damn dialogue in all its glory. At least B5 tried to move past a goddamned law and order formula and tell a fucking story.

I was never into it. But I didn&#39;t hate it. My brother loved it though. The episode I recall most was the time travel zathras episode. Where zathras comes from an earlier episode in the series the newer episode linked itself with an episode of the past. Was that done on purpose. I thought that was brillant. Was he thinking ahead of time?

With all due respect, I think the best treatment B5 got here was when Glen was still in charge of the coaxial side of things. Herc, and I speak of this from first hand interaction with him last year, just comes off as if can&#39;t be bothered if it isn&#39;t a personal favorite show of his. Hell, most days I look at his posts and wonder if he isn&#39;t on the payroll of TV Guide&#39;s PR department. But thank you Merrick for posting the story here.

No not the TV show... the ancient city of Mesopotamia. Iraq is getting tired and the area is well due a revamp. I&#39;d like to see a completly modern take on the orginal 500&#39;s BC city. Nebuchadnezzar should be played by Patrick Stewart, and the hanging gardens should be digitally insurted into the background. This time they shouldn&#39;t write out Alexander so early in the season. I want to see longer plot arcs with the writers putting in more thought towards future seasons so it doesn&#39;t all end in turmoil this time.

To answer your question, yes, JMS had the time travel thing all planned out. In fact, he had the show&#39;s five-year story arc planned out, including alternate plot points in case an actor were to leave the show, before the series began production. If you watch the whole thing, you&#39;ll see where forshadowing pays off either a couple of episodes or a couple of season down the road. I&#39;m sure your brother could fill you in more. :)

It&#39;s a personal favorite of mine; I&#39;m a lot like Glen. Despite the haters, B5 will get as much love as I can accommodate (keeping in mind that the information pipeline available to Glen is no longer in place...and hasn&#39;t been so for years...so we&#39;ll be starting from scratch trying to build up info conduits, networks, etc.)

Oh man, those nights were hell. you see I grew up on all incarnations of Trek at a 11pm timeslot. Tuesdays. And sometimes that crappy show would come on pretending to be some sort of substitute. I watched a couple. But it was like drinking instant coffee when the usual indulgence was premo italiana. Blah!

Ultimately, a victory for one cancelled sci-fi show is a victory for them all - maybe it&#39;ll help the process along for Joss and co. Although I think he stopped giving a shit after his wonderful, wonderful film failed to rake in the dough.

"Ben Parker killed in WWII"...add another horrible idea to the JMS Marvel pile. It&#39;s going to take Marvel a long time to retcon all the crap he&#39;s written for them. Never watched B5 before, now I never will. I&#39;m sure the writing on B5 is as colorless and boring as the art design.

you know, i&#39;m a huge firefly fan but in the end i think i wound up not liking serenity. wash died, book died (spoiler). book i could live without (but no explanation of his history? gee, thanks.), but in the end, i think firefly without wash is just rude. i&#39;m finding myself treating that movie like i treat a bunch of the star wars movies: i deny their existence.

I feel obligated to chime in and thank you guys for passing on the news, and to Merrick for his support. I think BABYLON 5 is easily one of the best (Top 3?) SF/F series of all time. I&#39;d argue that, with B5, JMS paved the way for true, post Trek science fiction on television, and his approach to the characters and the "arc" helped make today&#39;s shows (like BSG) better. If there are more stories for JMS to tell in this universe, BRING IT ON! In the meantime, Browncoats, let FIREFLY *earn* its chance to come back. JMS and the fans made this happen. If you want FIREFLY back, it&#39;s up to Whedon. It&#39;s not an either/or situation, I&#39;d be just as happy to see more of it as well.

were great shows. period. Babylon 5 made you think about diplomacy a bit, true. but then ya have 15 types of aliens that Hated each other all on one floating palace. Firefly is cowboys in space. I like westerns. See Deadwood. Have a nice day!

please explain to me how you could possible prefer DS9 over TNG. Generaions&#39; story-telling, writing, characters and overall production was superior to Deep Space in almost every aspect. i&#39;m not trying to be a dick, it&#39;s just rare when someone likes DS9 over TNG.

It was alluded to in the movie that Book&#39;s weird knowledge and connection with the Alliance was due to him having been an Alliance Operative just like the movie&#39;s villain, before finding Jesus or whatever.

I loved the movie - the second time I saw it. The first, not so much. But I&#39;d trade it in a second for another season (five, preferrably). And YackBacker: Alan Tudyk didn&#39;t ask for death - Joss is just kind of a prick that way. See BtVS.

Granted, any season of DS9 is better then any season of Voyager of Enterprisethe and the later seasons of DS9 were OK but the lousy 1st few years of DS9 should prevent it from ranking so high... And to put it in the same league as BSG???

Actually, I&#39;ve encountered many people who felt the same as I do. I thought DS9 was harder edged & took more chances than the other TREK series. It felt like it had traction, gusto, and meandered less. TNG had many moments of greatness, but never seemed to go anywhere sweeping. AS A WHOLE, TNG felt safe and a bit mamby pamby to me. Not trying to get into a heated debate w/ anyone....it&#39;s all a matter of personal preference anyway. But, since you asked...

JMS was an absolute lying fuck when he said it was a 5 season "novel for television" with a definite beginning, middle and end, as the last season left way too many annoyingly open plot threads - most of which were actually deliberately opened during season five. That bullshit still annoys me. And what was JMS&#39;s stock standard response, usually something like "well for those answers you can read about that in the upcoming novels, or comics, or play it in the videogame (which never happened), or spin off series or whatever else he was trying to flog with the B5 brandname on it...), now I&#39;m sorry, but I don&#39;t ever remember reading a novel to it&#39;s final pages, only to get to the end of the damn thing, still have masses of lately thrown out there plot threads left hanging and have it say that the story would be concluded in an entirely different medium whatsoever, such as in an upcoming movie or videogame or comic book series or whatever. It was an absolute bullshit move and utter calculated betrayal by JMS to all the fans that stuck by this show and supported it and swallowed this bullshit through all the various ups and downs. I swear that must have been the first lesson in class How To Fuck Over Long Time Fans 101, and it&#39;s still annoying that he succumbed to the temptation of it. Anyway end of pointlessly late and long winded rant. ************************************************************************** As for this news, honestly I don&#39;t much give a shit, and I was a huge fan of the original series. Still am I guess, despite it&#39;s clearly broken promises and occasional ups and downs. I mean let&#39;s face it, the show is long dead, two of the best actors from it are actually, literally dead, some of the others were pretty alienated by the end of it, and JMS&#39; post B5 run of the soon cancelled Crusade and the absolutely shitful Legend Of The Rangers tv movie didn&#39;t exactly send him, or his creation, out on a high note. I mean sure, I&#39;d watch out of curiosity, especially if this finally filled in some of those plot/story gaps still left hanging out there, but I can&#39;t say I&#39;m anything but apathetic at this point. Sad but true.

I also far preferred DS9 to TNG or Enterprise (Voyager isn&#39;t even in the competition), the original Trek and DS9 are probably about equal overall on my all time fave list, but I will say this - the last three years or so of DS9 is probably the best Trek ever got (despite the odd dodgy ep).

...And with that quote, this poster&#39;s cred just dropped to zero. Merrick, love the coverage you&#39;re doing, man -- keep it up. Agree wholeheartedly with that person above who said that Herc can&#39;t get arsed to cover a show if (A) Joss Whedon/Jane Espenson/Bryan Fuller didn&#39;t write it; (B) if JMS *did* write it; or (C) all of the above. Merrick, please stick around. We need you.

Lets start with the simple fact that without B5 you would not have any of the current sci-fi shows. It was the first non-trek sci-fi show to succeed and it proved that there was space there for sci-fi that was not the preachy idealistic sugar-coated fluf that is trek. It also brought the idea of using arc based storylines instead of a series of completely throwaway interchangable episodes (this is also what doomed it in the re-runs) but if you like, Buffy, Lost, Firefly, 24, Farscape, Galactica, etc. Just remember, B5 started it all, before that all you had was soaps. BTW, JMS&#39;s pitch for a new star trek series (from a few years back, posted here a month or two back) bears eerie similarity to another old sci-fi show that was resurected since then. And I understand people complaining about the production quality and acting, but you have to remmember that B5 was shot at a small fraction of Star Trek budget. Hell, I would guess a couple of episodes of Friends cost more than an entire B5 season. They were the first ones to actually use full-on CGI for most of their effects (a few years later, star trek copied that) 1993 CGI was cheasy compared to todays but it let them break all sorts of records and show what could never be shown before. I also understand why people who only seen bits and pieces of it would not like it. Its kinda like reading a few random Tolkien pages - it will confuse you and put you to sleep. If you really want to badmouth it, watch the whole thing. I own the DVD&#39;s and fewquently loan them out. My experience is almost always the same, people take weeks or months to watch season 1, they hesitate on season 2, but then watch it in about a week, then I give them season 3... about 24-36 hours later I get a frantic call (in one case, someone showed up on my doorstep at 3am) I get a mixture of pleading and threats and they generaly let me know that I am to drop everything and bring season 4 NOW. In some ways it shares something with Harry Potter. So dont forget where it all came from. B5 dared to do something completely different and changed the face of television. And now it is once again doing something completely different (at least for US shows) and who knows, maybe it will change again the way TV is created. Wouldn&#39;t it be nice to cut out network programming execs and advertisers and have a show be cancelled or renewed based on number of people actually watching it?

...those stories you&#39;re hatin&#39; on from the novels and comics simply *COULDN&#39;T FIT* into the 5-year arc short of doing another time-travel/"Deconstruction of Falling Stars"-type of storytelling leap. Don&#39;t forget, the three book trilogies were outlined at the same time CRUSADE was going into production and Warner Bros. were seriously interested in doing a feature film. JMS deliberately selected stories that he thought would be too complicated, involve too many "non-show" characters, and be too expensive ever to film to be told in the novels. He wrote the outlines for three trilogies published by Del Rey books, all "filling in" details from the series, all stories he *did not intend* to tell on-screen within the tightness of the 5-year arc itself. I think you&#39;re making too many leaps and assumptions on this one. Far indeed from "[a bullshit] move."

If not, then why open threads in the final year on the show, why not have the books be self contained in telling those stories? Why open entire new plot strands with Lennier and Londo and so on, only to never, in that very medium that you&#39;ve actually asked the questions in, also give the answers to? Watch season 5 again and see just how many new threads are opened up, never to be resolved within the run of the show, there is an absolute ton. My point is these threads never should have been opened (and the openings of these plot threads given so much screen time to sucker people into them) and then basically abandoned as part of the fifth season - it was supposed to be self contained, however opening up all these things late in the game in the final season made sure that it wasn&#39;t. It betrayed the basic premise the show was always sold on. And unless you jump to other mediums to follow them up, you&#39;d never get the whole story began on the show as promised. And Hell, some weren&#39;t even finished out at all, even in other mediums. Seriously, like I say, watch the final season again and see just how much was opened and then left open. Stuff that didn&#39;t need to be addressed at all, but was done at the expense of more time to adequately close the show, it&#39;s storylines and characters out. It&#39;s not what was promised, and it was a bullshit move. Nothing would have stopped him from still doing books or from starting and telling other stories or whatever else, which people could read, or watch, or whatever, as they chose, but he basically made it so that the books were part of forced continuity, whereas anything beyond the bounds of the show should be seen as basically expanded universe, and as thus optional, not essential in order to get a whole and complete story as begun on this "novel for television". If you disagree you&#39;re entitled, but I still do and always will think that it was an utterly calculated bullshit move.

Having read AICN for several years i&#39;ve never felt compelled to post anything until now...
I was a huge fan of B5 back when it was on. Despite the questionable acting, wobbly sets, occasionally lacklustre dialogue and poor CGI composition (yet great TV CGI for the time), I loved B5. It rocked. I was probably about 15 when it first started and was amazed at the scope, potential and philosophy of the show. It kept me tuning in week after week and those months between "Z&#39;ha&#39;dum" and "Hour of the wolf" - when the show&#39;s future was in jeopardy - were quite possibly the longest 9 months of my life (back then) - what a cliffhanger! And season 4 didn&#39;t disappoint. While it certainly felt rushed, it managed to tie up as many of the loose story threads as it could in the time that it had and, though disappointed the final episodes weren&#39;t a two-parter dealing with the events shown in "War Without End", kudos to JMS for wrapping the show up the best he could with the time and resources at his disposal. Without doubt, I&#39;d argue that seasons 1 to 4 of B5 are up there with the best of classic TV SF. And then the show wasn&#39;t cancelled after all... but there was no story left to tell... and what followed in subsequent years has been the biggest pile of complete and utter, dare I say banal and dull, crock of shit I&#39;ve ever had the misfortune to waste my time on. "In the Beginning" was enjoyable but unnecessary. Season 5 was a boring, 22 episode long pilot for a 13 episode spin off that was subsequently cancelled and every TV movie that followed was either embarrassing or forgettable. And then, almost 9 years after the B5 story ended (in 1997 with S4, in my mind) we have this news. Well, as a B5 fan - and by that I mean a fan of it&#39;s proposed 5-year-long, multi-layered story arc - I&#39;d like to say I&#39;m happy to hear this news... but it&#39;s come 9 years, a fifth season and half-a-dozen TV movies too late.
Rest in peace, Andreas Katsulas, because you and Peter Jurasik WERE Babylon 5.

But, not putting a question mark at the end of the headline/link does us all a disservice. This franchise has had way too many false (re)starts in recent years to trust JMS&#39;s ramblings at a con panel. What about the major motion picture that he told us was almost certainly a done deal with serious Hollywood backing? It never happened. And if you bag on the show, you&#39;re just showing your ignorance. Anyone past puberty when the show hit in its first run (and was paying attention) knows it&#39;s a very significant work in the genre.

Without it there wouldn&#39;t have been the huge story archs we have today in prime time (especially Battlestar Galactica). I actually like the first three Trek series better (each one is like a different argument about secular humanism, and were able to bring something new and vibrant to the table), but B5 was much more into the overlying story arch than DS9, especially at DS9&#39;s beginning. You have to give B5 credit for helping to get rid of the "reset button."

DS9 was far more rich in characters and storylines (especially after you get past the first season) than TNG (even after you get past the first god-awful three seasons). TNG didn&#39;t discover the magic of character development until around Season 5 or so (strangely, about the same time Gene started losing control of the series...connection?). Also, nearly half the episodes of TNG were exactly the same: Enterprise travels to planet to make peaceful contact. Planet displays some aspect of modern society that the writers want to pick on (war, sexuality, drugs, political distrust, economics, etc), Picard passes moral judgement on the people of that planet in the form of "shame on you" lecture by Picard, Enterprise flies off to pass moral judgement on yet another planet. Thankfully, this started to change once the studio started pushing Rodenberry into more of a &#39;token&#39; role. But I digress...at least Gene never managed to force his infamous "JFK Time Travel" script on the show or movies. ;)

as you&#39;ll note in my argument I state that I credit it with the story archs in "prime time." Of course soap operas were the first to have story archs, but they were seen as something separate and distinct, not something that could be transplanted outside of the soap opera/drama genre. What B5 did was show that there was an interest in story archs outside of strict drama and outside of afternoon television.

something new to a secular humanist view of the world. TOS was a questioning of what makes us human and showed us that we have infinite potential that we have yet to live up to (a multicultural world and the technological advances). The Next Generation was there to show us how a secular humanist world would work as well as expanding on the themes of the original. Deep Space Nine was the darkest series because it questioned how (or even if) a secular humanist view of the world could persist in times of war and other strife. And I have no clue what the other series were trying to say because they pretty much sucked.

frankly, if Babylon 5 had not existed then B5 would never have existed. Its only because of b5 and its far more intelligent plotting and structure that DS9 managed to break free of its complacent dumb little baloon after Rodenberry popped his clogs

I do remember this site had superb coverage on B5 back when it was on, with an early piece on Sleeping in Light and the first pictures of Crusade. I didn&#39;t mean to imply otherwise. It was the fact that AICN seemed suddenly to turn so indifferent and cold towards the show after that, even through LoTR and the whole TMoS debacles, that was so jarring. It was as if the show had never been on the air. The result seems to be a whole new generation of readers who don&#39;t seem to remember what B5 did in its heyday, why it was so important, and why it was so fantastic!! Brilliant news that its coming back, and glad to hear the record is going to be set straight..

The last few seasons of DS9 with the whole Jemhedar & Cardasian arc were (arguably) better than any whole sesason(s) of TNG. However, TNG carried the spirit of TOS far better then DS9 and was thus "authentic" Star Trek. DS9 didn&#39;t need to exist in the Trek universe. It was just a SciFi show that borrowed the Trek license so that it would have an immediate audience. And as someone who grew up watching TOS every week, TNG is therefore the "better Trek" even though DS9&#39;s last few seasons may have been better television

...there are ALWAYS going to be "loose threads" and unresolved plotpoints in any major TV series. It&#39;s the nature of the beast. Look no further than DS9, which set up innumerable dangling plot-threads with its final season, and which the "relaunch" novels picked up the ball with. Matter of fact, JMS mentioned way back in his earliest days online (IIRC, prior to B5&#39;s pilot airing) that there&#39;d always be untold stories that the series simply couldn&#39;t deal with; he&#39;s been upfront with us about that right from Day One. It isn&#39;t what you&#39;re making it out to be. ..........................As for the Londo and Lennier-points, you&#39;re forgetting here that when Season 5 was written, JMS&#39;s relationship with TNT was still rosy (with CRUSADE and a feature film on the horizon), and he planned to deal with the Lennier issue in the Teep War movie. The TNT shit soured, and his plans were forced to be modified or jettisoned altogether. Londo might&#39;ve popped in on CRUSADE, but there isn&#39;t much that he actually **does** during those seventeen years he&#39;s on the throne. He sits there, a prisoner of the Drakh, and the resistance movement is slowly set up over those decades by others. What story there was would&#39;ve been dealt with on CRUSADE (involving Galen on Centauri Prime), but the novels got to cover that instead. Quite frankly, we&#39;re lucky we even got **that**, as they could&#39;ve simply left everything unresolved.

Roddenberry&#39;s downright fascistic flag-waving concept of "The Federation" held back Star Trek from being a lot better. And he did have creative input, if not then strange then that after he died DS9 improved vastly. For example the Dominion war, a quite amazingly unStar-Trek storyline.

Let&#39;s be realistic, here. Goddenberry was delighted with anything with his name on it that stayed on the air and earned money. G.R.&#39;s mooshy sweetness-and-light garbage was the worst part of TNG, and almost torpedoed the series during its run....DS9&#39;s major recommendation was that they were at least *TRYING* to tell stories with a bit of scope. Lacking conflict, there is nothing to generate a range of interesting plots. But with Goddenberry&#39;s intense involvement with recreational pharmaceuticals and his perpetual ethanol-induced smiling haze, it was a bit difficult for him to apprehend the fact that any problems existed, and his ego prompted the termination of anyone who argued with him or tried to contribute anything worthwhile to the show.

Seriously, I could do better graphics on my Amiga back in the day than they had on B5. I am no Star Trek appologist mind you, I still cringe when Riker and Troi look at each other when the jellyfish are going to hump in Farpoint. And I cheered when Data was finally killed off. But B5 tried just looked cheap. No offense, but it did. It felt like I was stuck with Wing Commander 2. And the series "arc" was not well done either. Very convoluted at times, often boring, and mired in tiny details that never went anywhere, or paid off in small amounts. It is like watching Lost, but waiting for the big reveal only to find out that it was just that some diplomat used to bonk Claudia C. Sorry people, but look back it with an open mind, and you&#39;ll relaize that it&#39;s not all that good. Certainly nowhere near the love that should be had for ST: TOS. And don&#39;t even get me started on Bruce Boxlightner.

THATS RIGHT..ZATHRAS IS ZATHRAS..BUT NO ONE LISTENS TO ZATHRAS..ONLY PEOPLE WITH SMALL MINDS DONT LIKE BABYLON 5, THATS WHY ZATHRAS IS VERY EXCITED,ITS GREAT AND I LOVE BABYLON5..ZATHRAS SAYS, HAVE A NICE DAY..AND AM VERY GREATFULL THAT JMS IS COMING BACK...I WISH THEY WOULD PUT BABYLON 5 AND BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, BACK TO BACK ON SCI FI..BUT THAT IS JUST ZATHRAS...

...that half of the stuff originally planned for it wound up in season 4 (because they thought they weren&#39;t going to get season 5). Considering that, you should be able to watch the first four seasons, minus DoFS, plus SiL, and have a relatively complete story, without the hooks for the spinoffs that did (Londo and Centauri under control of the Drakh) and did not (Telepath war) get developed yet.

I recently started Netflixing the Babylon 5 season DVDs, having fondly remembered the show. I have to say, the absolutely shit-tastic Jurassic CG and half-assed Buck-Rogers quality sets have rendered Babylon 5 positively UNWATCHABLE. It has really not aged well at all. I could care less if they want to bring it back. Babylon 5 is dead and best left to the fond memories you may still have for the show. Stop beating the dead horse. The bones are almost dust as-is.

I used to love DS9. Until I saw B5. There is a particular episode that comes to mind whenever I want to explain the differences between these two superficially similar shows. There was one specific plot done in both shows. (Spoilers, if anyone cares) The station&#39;s doctor encounters a sick alien child. The illness is fatal if untreated, but easily fixed with a simple surgery. The child&#39;s parents have very strong religious beliefs that do not allow for the skin to be cut into. In both episodes, the doctor pleads with the captain to allow the surgery, and both are turned down for fear of the political backlash. Both doctors perform the surgery anyway. In DS9, the parents see that their child is the same as always, and they forgive the doctor, and after some finger wagging, all is well. In B5, after the parents see what has happened, they believe their child is now a demon without a soul, and they freaking KILL HIM! Now, personally, I find the B5 version to be a lot more interesting, complex, believable, and thought-provoking. But that might just be me.

The thing most folks love about "Believers" is that it had an ending that most shows would *NEVER* have gone near. Of course, the doctor WOULD operate on the boy and the parents would bow to the superior wisdom of Our Heroes

Roddenberry was a weird old Reds under the bed, flag-waver, pro-americana idiot. Who had the idea for a half-way decent tv show.If he&#39;d had his way we never would have even had star trek 6, by far the best of the films.
Also words are intangible, read Alice through the looking glass. I like the way fascistic sounds.

What&#39;s with all the B5 hate? it was like Doctor Who--fantasically written with poor production values. still, a worthwhile show. My only concern is how you can fit a character driven story into 20 minutes.

That new UPN/WB merged network ought to look into doing that before it goes belly up. Have it take place over two nights in November and it&#39;ll be the biggest ratings they&#39;ll ever score. Unlike B5, the cast here is all still alive and healthy and I&#39;m sure would be eager to do it.

And their kneejerk reactions to anything B5 related. How predictable and pathetic. All that hatred only shows how frustrated they must be that the whole word was witness to the fact what kind of drek Trek had become since TOS and nobody with half a brain would watch it anymore, though personally I thought some eps of the last attempt to revive the Roddenberry corpse, "Enterprise", was quite good.
That said, JMS should let it rest and accept that B5 had its day. "Legend of the Rangers" was truly and horifically bad. I&#39;d rather see Crusade picked up again, but it would never get a chance to blossom so let&#39;s leave it at that.
Firefly lovers, I&#39;m all there with you, loved every minute of it, but of course new Farscape, provided a good original plot would be at hand, would be even more welcome.
I must admit though a JJ Abrams Trek is quite intriguing.

Remembering we liked it back in the day, sat down with geek buddies last year to watch B5 from the beginning on DVD. Spent each series saying "it really does get better" to the one who hadn&#39;t seen it. Finally everyone had to admit it is an unwatchable pile of shit with laughably bad dialogue, hopelessly wooden acting and an air of desperate self-importance. Somehow it has built a cosy nostalgic glow in my memory - perhaps I remember the potential rather than the execution - but that is where it should have stayed.

JMS believes in "Russian" style (ie: slow build, quick burn) storytelling. The first two seasons of B5 have MANY MANY godawful moments that even the real hardcore B5 fan will admit to (ie: me) and subsequent seasons had the odd speechified moment that can make you cringe - but so do DS9, TNG, BSG and every other series mentioned above. But if you watch all 110 eps and don&#39;t think that there was something truly great in the delivering on promises.
The tragic trajectory of Londo (the goofy hair guy) is one of the purest character arcs I have ever seen. Make that THE best. Nothing else comes close. In episode 1 you are told that G&#39;kar and Londo will die at each others throats, and they do, but by that point EVERYTHING has changed from what you may have expected.
Crusade was going to go this route but never got the chance, it was inconsistent due to screwing with from the higher ups at TNT, aired in the wrong order, and cancelled despite solid ratings.
JMS has described the ways in which the show would have TRANSFORMED completely by the end of season 2 - to something wildly different, yet presaged.
Rangers was a shallow effort, but again - had a lot of promise and potential to be more then what was shown, but it had to be self-contained on orders from
DS9 didn&#39;t have half as many cool space battles prior to its last season, and B worked with SIGNIFICANTLY lower budgetary constraints.
If TNT hadn&#39;t f***ed Crusade, season 5 of Crusade would have shut up any non-fans. I hope this endeavour manages to restore the name of B5 back into the mainstream where it belongs, as one of the main seminal series of TV sci-fi.

The end of that should read:<p>
"Rangers was a shallow effort, but again - had a lot of promise and potential to be more then what was shown, but it had to be self-contained on orders from SFC. DS9 didn&#39;t have half as many cool space battles prior to its last season, and B5 worked with SIGNIFICANTLY lower budgetary constraints. If TNT hadn&#39;t f***ed Crusade, season 5 of Crusade would have shut up any non-fans. I hope this endeavour manages to restore the name of B5 back into the mainstream where it belongs, as one of the main seminal series of TV sci-fi.

Both DS9 and B5 were nominated for plenty of Hugos and Saturns, but B5 actually won several (2 hugos, 1 saturn, 1 bradbury).
Plus B5 had many accolades for writing, something DS9 never was recognized for. Plus three Saturn nods for acting to 1 for DS9. Hmm...
I mean as far as awards and critical acclaim go, there is no comparison. Since original Trek only BSG has gotten close to that.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106145/awards
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105946/awards

kick ass. DS9 is one of the few shows that felt like it could have kept on going after the final episode. I can&#39;t think of a single other show that could have kept on going for another year or two, hell, most shows should have been canceled a yera or two before their final episode. I like the idea of a miniseries, but I also like the idea that DS9 kept everyone wanting more. Of course I&#39;m greedy, so I&#39;d still freakin&#39; flip out if they ever did decide to do something that cool.

Are you seriously suggesting that Roddenberry was a flag-waving conservative? Good gravy, man, have you even watched trek? The symbol for the federation is the UN symbol, for Kirk&#39;s sake! Furthermore, you are stating that roddenberry wrote/influenced DS9, and that is completely retarded. Gene couldnt even cut his own birthday cake, let alone hold a bic pen, my friend. And finally, this influential bird in the sky couldnt even propose a working film script that didnt involve the kennedy assassination. Kizeesh, I&#39;m officially revoking your talkback privledges. Return now from whence you came.

Talk about a bullshit made-for-TV movie that just sat there like a steaming lump of shit. Truly one of the most boring things I&#39;ve ever seen, another Hollywood example of "Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put ANY money into this thing???" I certainly HOPE JMS has recharged his batteries and gained some perspective since unloading that pile of crap, otherwise all we&#39;re due for is more heapings of direct to video dung that isn&#39;t even worth a freebie Blockbuster rental...

For the record, something&#39;s SERIOUSLY wrong with a show...and any person trying to support it...when they have to resort to saying, "Well, IF it had lasted for 4 more years, THEN it would have finally gotten good!" Here&#39;s the bottom line: CRUSADE blew coming out of the gate, so OF COURSE there wasn&#39;t going to ever be a Season 5 to address naysayers. But, hey, that&#39;s just me since I have this really old fashioned, kooky idea that any show that&#39;s seeking renewel should actually be good and engaging starting with Season ONE, otherwise it fairly deserves to get the axe and make room for the next contestant...

I&#39;ve always considered B5 very similar to the original Star Trek in that both shows were struggling to survive and present new ideas on a limited budget, with theatre-quality sets, new and often untried effects, and with arguably third-string actors. Both shows generated movements in fandom that are strong to this day. All subsequent Treks have ridden on the coattails of the original, until Enterprise finally wore them out. The unsafe nature and unpredictability of these shows is what has separated them from the scores of other sci-fi shows we&#39;ve watched over the last 40 years. I&#39;ve always been a Trek fan but I found myself less and less interested with every iteration of the franchise. B5, in its original form, is the show that stays with me. I&#39;m hoping what ever new projects come in the future, they will be up to the standard that we fans are expecting.
For the record, I&#39;m also curous as to what JJ Abrams has in the works for Trek. I don&#39;t feel he really caught the essence of Mission: Impossible, but he was closer to it that the previous two films had been.
As for open threads, the only thread left open is the Telepath War. We know what happens to Londo. It takes a while, but it DOES happen.

I once had a friend who did the same damn thing with wonder bread--snack food city. However, interesting enough, I did know someone who actually watched B5. I&#39;m not sure he actually liked the show very much, but he did watch it, and was the ONLY person I&#39;ve ever met in real life that did. His favorite snackfood, you ask? Eggos. That&#39;s right, every time he wanted something to snack, he&#39;d toast some waffles. I dont know what happened to my friend, but I&#39;m sure that somewhere there is an IHOP that is doing very, very well.

Babylon 5 was one of the greatest original sci-fi series ever created for television. That includes any and all of the Star Trek series. To all of the B5 haters, kiss my fucking ass. Don&#39;t even start with the DS9 shit. I liked that show, but honestly, it didn&#39;t even get interesting until the Dominion War story arc. B5 was outstanding from beginning to end. It actually had a compelling story to tell. It was vastly superior to anything that Berman/Braga produced. Period.

What I meant was that it got a raw deal. By now we would have all five seasons of it and this conversation was moot. It was going to be more solid then B5 throughut. It was the show that would&#39;ve made B5 a franchise to be reckoned with. If you watch the episodes in the correct order and forgive some of the studio mandated bullcrap (drum up gratuitous sex and violence, change uniforms, awful "second pilot episode" etc)... there was something crazy building up. And if you read the unproduced season finale. And for the record: Crusade was NOT cancelled. It was axed as a casualty of corporate politics at TNT. It had some of TNT&#39;s best non-Wrestling ratings and was building, even though they barely promoted it. They killed it before it got out of the gate. Very similar to what happened with Firefly.

DS9 was better. And DS9 beat the tar out of TNG too.... Anyone notice that there is little dialogue in B5, but a LOT of monologues.... B5 was not the first SF show to be successful other than Trek. There was a little show called The X-Files before it, and THAT is what allowed shows like Buffy et al.....I could add that Quantum Leap ran for a few years before X-Files.... Note that the success of TNG was what allowed craptastic shows like SeaQuest, Earth 2 and Space Rangers on the air. Networks were not adverse to trying non-Trek shows prior to B5, nor was B5 some phenomenal success everyone wanted to duplicate.... On the story "arc", soaps generally are a different thing. They are not usually well planned out advance with a discrete beginning middle and end. Soaps are plotted more like 24.... Anyone ever hear of the Prisoner? Anyone? Let&#39;s see, was that before or after B5? I know it was close. Yep - it beat B5 on the air by about three decades.... How about Seinfeld? It&#39;s fourth season was a preplanned arc (that&#39;s the one with the pilot). I hear that show found a niche audience...

I&#39;m sorry but G&#39;Kar was my favorite part of the show. With him gone, it won&#39;t be worth as much to me. Also the hurt of this show&#39;s premature cancellation has been overshadowed by the much more jarring death of shows like Farscape and Firefly (which didn&#39;t get to end on their terms like Bablyon 5 did and didn&#39;t have a crappy last season or stinker spin offs). Also, Richard Biggs&#39;s death was really terrible as well since he was quite young and left a family behind. Very sad what happened to B5 really, it went the way of the X-Files in a way without ever tasting that kind of overrated success.

They nominated The Island, Fantastic Four, Saw 2 and Madagascar for best picture (in their respective categories). Natalie Portman was nominated best actress for Sith. I&#39;ll take DS9&#39;s Peabody any day......

When is it supposed to get good? I watched the entire first season on DVD after everybody threw such high praise towards the show. I made it about two episodes into season 2 and had to give up on it. I tired to like it, I really did

Is when it blows almost everything out of the water. S1 and S2 just blow. Things start to ramp up about half way through season 2, but from about the third episode in S3 till the last episode of S4, the show stays at max throttle. The only episode in S1 that you would REALLY need to see is ep13: Signs and Portents. If you&#39;ve already seen some eps from S2 by that stage, skip ahead to eps15&16, then to eps20,21&22.

Straczynski had developed Babylon 5 for an number of years, having approuched every major studio for marketing and financial backing, and on the eve of getting Babylon 5 on the air, here comes the Star Trek people to rip it off in order to diminish any threat of competition to Star Trek by other space themed sci-fi shows!!! Straczynski knows this to be true, but could do nothing about it!!! DS9 is the result of that rip-off, and quite frankly, despite the false and misplaced praise for the copy cat show, it was a stuffy self important cheese fest that failed to break new ground in tv, story or anything else!!!

The strength of B5 is its arc. Any actor not in makeup (Andreas, Peter or Mira) was weak, and that undermined character development. Thus before the arc kicks in in S2, its hard to really see much goodness in B5. With DS9, even when I hated the story I could enjoy the characters. With B5,non-arc stories could be tough to struggle through, at least at first. Eventually the actors got better, and the writers got better at writing to the actors. The story arcs started to kick in mid-S2 and all was pretty good until the end of S4. The problem is that there are some episodes in S2 and S3 that pretty much lays out what will happen (prophecy, time travel), and that killed some of the suspense, but it is interesting watching it unfold. S5 was hurt because it wasn&#39;t supposed to happen - many of its planned plot points were moved to S4, so the start of S5 feels very padded. Anyway, once I knew the story of B5 (having watched most of S2 and all S3 and 4 on tv), I rewatched S1 on DVD and found it wasn&#39;t as bad as I remembered, simply because there were many small threads being laid down that were impossible to see without knowing what would come.... For the arc, I would try to watch Signs and Portents, Babylon Squared and Chrysalis in S1, and then watch as much S2 as you can.

When it was originally airing I dismissed the show out of hand and gave up - I thought it was godawful. (I saw the pilot, and then TKO - the worst ever ep of B5!) I watched the show all at once in syndication once it was done, due to friends who assured me repeatedly that the 5 year arc was so worth it. So I suffered thru the first year and a half (which has its moments, especially once you&#39;ve seen the whole series and can see how carefully the building blocks for later seasons were set up) until I reached one episode... 2x09 - "The Coming of Shadows" - after that I was solidly hooked. Crusade&#39;s "coming of shadows" would have come much earlier, the unproduced #15 finale. Again why I say that we can&#39;t even fathom the coolness that would have been the 4th and 5th seasons of Crusade.

July 25, 2006, 12:22 a.m. CST

by treewarrior

the thing about B5, if you know the backstory behind what jms had to go through to get this show on the air, you forgive the first season&#39;s cheapness in sets and makeup. i think what he did with the budget he had in bringing his five year novel for television to the small screen was nothing short of brilliant. that said, i will say that while the first four seasons are incredible, compelling television, everything made after the move to TNT (not including &#39;In The Beginning&#39;) was the pits, and i mean AWFUL. Read his posts in the newsgroup and he&#39;s actually proud of the fifth year and the TV movies and Crusade. What I saw were the same actors, the same great scripts, the same stories, but none of the excitement of the first four seasons. He was working under the gun to put together an action-adventure show every week and when they moved to TNT, it was like, "Hey, fuck the action-adventure bullshit, I&#39;m going to create a Science-Fiction DRAMA!!" Look at Crusade, it was photographed like a friggin&#39; stage play! And this was supposed to be his super action sci-fi show! Static sets, static camera shots. A character walks in, two-shot of the characters delivering theatrical speeches, then one of them leaves. Dull! The original four seasons had drive, they had energy and style and interesting camera angles. Crusade, Season five, the TV movies, I can pick apart any episode and show you why the TNT episodes were dull city versus the elegant and awe inspiring seasons 1-4. But you know what, I have all the DVD sets because the guy&#39;s a great writer and I always give him the benefit of the doubt, just because of B5&#39;s first four seasons, and I actually think, as another poster said, that giving JMS a few years distance from the original show will breathe some new energy into these direct to video disks. I just wish he wasn&#39;t directing them. He can&#39;t direct worth shit.

July 25, 2006, 12:33 a.m. CST

by Phantasmagor

I&#39;m not a friend of movies out of tivi. Tivi will give me so much more stories, while movies give me only one for a long time.
But I&#39;m happy to see that there is finally something coming up now. Even if it&#39;s only three shortstories. For the moment it&#39;s more than nothing. I&#39;m looking forward to see what JMS has in mind for us. And perhaps... it&#39;s just a new beginning.

Hmm... first post, and I forgot the Subject! (sorry)
I&#39;m not a friend of movies out of tivi. Tivi will give me so much more stories, while movies give me only one for a long time.
But I&#39;m happy to see that there is finally something coming up now. Even if it&#39;s only three shortstories. For the moment it&#39;s more than nothing. I&#39;m looking forward to see what JMS has in mind for us. And perhaps... it&#39;s just a new beginning.

I wanted to... it just never happened. Recently, however, I watched all of the episodes of firefly and the film "Serenity" and I fucking loved it. It&#39;s such a cool feeling to be involved with characters for 12 episodes only to see them get offed in the feature film without warning. Shocking and awesome. I&#39;d say forget B5 and bring back firefly. Especially if B5 is supposed to be self contained... Firefly has alot let that they could do with it.

I just thought I&#39;d let you guys know that today I saw Serenity, my first ever exposure to the Firefly show/series/movie/universe. It was fantastic, I&#39;m sorry it didn&#39;t recieve the following it deserved on TV/box office. For those of you that have been pushing this series/movie, you guys were absolutely right, and I&#39;m sorry I wasn&#39;t on the bandwagon soon enough. It&#39;s well deserving of all the praise it&#39;s received from you little queers. Just thought I&#39;d let you know.

DS9 is one fkn excellent TV series. Quite possibly one of THE best TV series ever shown. Sure, it ripped off B5 but I see no problem with that - it gave me TWO programmes to enjoy and in the end it delivered where B5 couldn&#39;t because it had the money and studio behind it, which B5 didn&#39;t. Both series produced some turkey episodes - which shows haven&#39;t?? - but the wholes were far greater than the sum of the parts (B5 s1-4, at least). DS9 is the best Trek series in so many ways - whole multi-episode story arcs were set around Dukat, Odo, Garak, Weyoon, Dumar, etc - not one of them wearing a Federation uniform or spouting the Roddenberry mantra - but the crew still did and this conflict created some fantastic stories, character development and relationships. Personally, I&#39;m bored of watching a bunch of chummy, self-righteous twats cruising the universe in a ship, telling a different story each week - TOS and TNG were great and original but Voyager and Enterprise??? Same old, same old, same old shit. And when the ratings started to fall or extra spice needed to be added... what did they do? They took inspiration from DS9, which had taken it&#39;s inspiration from B5 (just to bring it back on topic). B5 DID revolutionize modern US television, showing that episodic, reset-button-hitting story-telling on TV was not the only way to go - that the audience could be intelligent, thoughtful and follow a story beyond 45 mins even though they enjoyed watching the idiot&#39;s lantern. B5 looked cheap and crappy a decade ago, let alone by today&#39;s standards, but it was experimental, different and interesting, and you could see what it was trying to do. Once it showed it could be done and be successful, many others followed suit, including DS9... and all of which have ultimately done it far better than B5 because they&#39;ve had the money and the support of the studio behind them. Babylon 5 deserves it&#39;s place in television history but in the past is where it should stay.

MrD is right - s1 of B5 is certainly better when watched retrospectively as you can see where the plot threads were being sown. You can also see where the story may have taken us if it hadn&#39;t been for actors leaving and the need to restructure the story. You watch season 1 again and it&#39;s quite clear that: War Without End was going to be the season 5 finale - an episode that takes us back to the very first season, 20 years into the future, and a 1000 years (or actually a million if you listen to the s1 Valen comments) into the past; that the Shadow War was going to escalate during the 5th season, with B5 (and Garibaldi) being destroyed by the Shadows, leading to a 15 year interstellar war; that, with the chips being down, the Shadows decide to flee a million years into the past (either to hide or destroy Earth/Minbar) with Valen, Delenn and others returning in time to stop them - a true, cyclical, war without end; and that a million years of evolution had turned Human/Minbari hybrids into the angel-like Vorlons guiding their ancestors with knowledge of the future. There&#39;s much evidence in season 1 and 2 that indicate as much, especially Sinclair&#39;s visit to Kosh in season 1, where Kosh is watching images of Earth&#39;s history on a screen. Sinclair remarks "Those are images from my world". After a conversation and request for help, Kosh replies "We take no interest in the affairs of others". Sinclair reacts subtly, then leaves. It&#39;s brief but it&#39;s a seed. Also, watch Babylon Squared again and tell me there aren&#39;t Shadows aboard B4!
Yeah - i&#39;m a B5 geek, but my point is this - for it&#39;s occasionally dire acting, sloppy writing, and cheap production values there was (to quote the sloppy writing) one HELL of fkn story behind that show. Some of it was told, some of it wasn&#39;t and some of it was adapted. Enjoy B5 s1-4 for what it was and what it could have been. Enjoy the talents of Katsulas, Jurasik and Furlan... and forget the rest that followed... because it was shit.

Reading the above, it seems B5 has reached an awkward age now, where it&#39;s just old enough to look dated but not yet old enough to be considered a &#39;classic&#39; in the way that Star Trek TOS, the original BSG and even TNG are, with all the attendant allowances people make when a show really does belong to another time. Nobody now expects the Enterprise in TOS to fly in a straight line, or the sets to look hyper-realistic, or the acting to be gritty and understated, and nobody now expects the original BSG to use all-new footage for every expensive space battle - because we make allowances. For the record, I think B5s effects are superb - they were never photo-realistic, but they were consistent and created by pioneering artists who made the best use of the technology available to them at the time to further a dramatic story. And the sets, which were cavernous, dark, colourful, textured, inventive and Bladerunneresque, were at the time the perfect antidote to Trek&#39;s sterility. It simply isn&#39;t fair to compare B5 to Firefly or the new BSG - those came years later, cost far more to make, and haven&#39;t yet proved to have the same staying power.

Another problem I think is that every reinvention or revisit of B5 is absolutely dire and if that&#39;s all people get to see of B5, and is the best new-B5 has to offer, then I can appreciate why it&#39;s viewed in such a negative way. LOTR (Rangers, not Rings - speaking of rip offs... ;) was awful. JMS has to stop producing stuff like this, before he sullies what remains of B5&#39;s good name, and needs to bring the arc-story back in focus. And if he&#39;s going to do it forgodsakes I hope he employs a script editor and gets some of his top-drawer directors back. Doing it himself is the worst that can happen. Why he didn&#39;t develop the story into a clash between the offspring of Human/Minbari (David Sheridan) and Vorlons/Shadows (son/daughter of Lyta and a shadow-telepath from the s4 war) is beyond me. JMS has become a blinkered, egotistical hack who can no longer see the potential in his own creation. "And perhaps that&#39;s the biggest tragedy of the whole damn story."

The Next Generation was the most mind blowingly consistantly good TV show ever. And yes I&#39;m aware of the troubled first and second seasons.... as well as a couple dull (yet rare) episodes of season 6 & 7. But DS9..... My god, It was just something that can&#39;t be in competition with it&#39;s predecessor series, because DS9 was the continued universe. It was TNG taken beyond the confines of the Enterprise corridors. And the show just kept getting bigger and bigger. So big that the sheer number of characters and story archs could well have taken the show into feature films to this very day. Voyager was good too. It&#39;s only problem was that it had no arch. Voyager can be written off as Star Trek for girls. Those last 2 films and that last series were a fucking tragedy. Babylon 5 wanted to be star trek so bad. Thats why it&#39;s so looked down on by Trek loyalists. Firefly, however, was so bloody confident in itself that Trek loyalists, like myself, can actually take that show as the perfect substitute. But i feel bad saying that, because Firefly was just fucking great. And I didn&#39;t watch it until after I saw Serenity. Damn shame that show got cancelled. Damn shame.

"Here&#39;s the bottom line: CRUSADE blew coming out of the gate...", but he apparently forgot that the first seasons of TNG or DS9 weren&#39;t all that great either. The rule of thumb at the time (which at least applied to the Trek series) was "it&#39;ll take three seasons for them to get on their feet". No one expected a new series to knock their socks off until they had gotten established and settled in. Is this a double standard or faulty memory on TP&#39;s part? (P.S. I&#39;d have included Voyager in that list, but that never really got better...)

Historically, it matters rather hugely, since the Paramount Folks were telling syndication stations that BABYLON 5 was just a "cheap rip-off" of DS9, that legal action was pending, that BABYLON 5 wouldn&#39;t be able to stay on the air, and that since BABYLON 5 was a "rip-off" of DS9, if the station wanted to air Paramount skiffy, it couldn&#39;t run BABYLON 5. (This last, by the way, is a violation of federal law, and stopped happening **quick** once it
started being openly discussed on the Net, with copies aimed at
various FCC folks.)

As a result of the Paramount shoot-down-the-competition campaign, the Trekkies on-line took up the pursuit, howling like a pack of mutts in pursuit, and posted huge compendia of detail similarities between the two shows, griping and grousing about Joe Straczynski&#39;s bald-faced theft, and discussing how the huge degree of format similarity and character designs and plot situations "proved" that B5 was a steal of DS9.

........ONLY THEN, after someone pointed out the real-world chronology, provided citations for Stracynski&#39;s on-line discussion of his series as far back as &#39;87, for Stracyznski&#39;s pitch to Paramount in &#39;89, how the Paramount Folks had adamantly insisted "no shows set on space stations," and suddenly firewalled the throttle on the new DS9 **after** Straczynski finally found a home at WB......spending between four and five times as much on their pilot movie, just to get it in the can and on the air before the WB and PTEN folks bothered to air the BABYLON 5 pilot.....(and, incidentally, forcing JMS to do in-flight format revisions to avoid the most blatant similarities, in effect writing *AROUND* his own ideas so he wouldn&#39;t be giving viewers almost the same thing they&#39;d seen on the overbudgeted DS9 pilot film)..........ONLY THEN did the Trekkies and the Paramount Folks decide there was no similarity between the shows at all. Funny, that.

"...the offspring of Human/Minbari (David Sheridan) and Vorlons/Shadows (son/daughter of Lyta and a shadow-telepath from the s4 war) is beyond me. JMS has become a blinkered, egotistical hack who can no longer see the potential in his own creation."............................This has to be the most single-handedly barfulously stupid thing I&#39;ve read in this thread to date.

Everyone goes on and on about how great DS9 was. If it wasn&#39;t for B5&#39;s ongoing arc that didn&#39;t have every damn show ending without something changing, DS9 would have been as static and unchanging as the worst episodes of ST:TNG. DS9 still had loads of clunker episodes that are even more unwatchable than when they first aired. There&#39;s the ep when a bunch of crew members go to Risa and it gets taken over by some galactic moral majority. There&#39;s the asinine way the war with the Klingons was "stalled" by Sisko giving some poorly written speech. There&#39;s the time-travel ep to Area 51. And Bashir&#39;s idiotic James Bond fetish made up whole cloth to ride the popularity of movies being shown at the same time. Too much of Trek is made up as they went along. Many so-called "major" plot points (mostly ones involving character relationships) were made up to fill out short episodes. And the show only really decided to get a story that had some level of continuity when it was announced that it was ending. At least B-5 had a direction and continuing change that made sense. It was a good show with an epic mythology, while DS9 squandered every story hook (especially the so-called ancient Bajoran civilization. We get one warp-sailboat out of it and it&#39;s dropped). The Dominion and Jem-haddar would have been more impressive had they been there as soon as the wormhole was opened (seeing that they controlled that sector of the galaxy), instead of being made up at a later date. Having a head writer would have helped a lot, but there were fan-made scripts to film. Feh.

The first half of Season 5 was padded since many of the major events planned for it were condensed down into Season 4 (since they thought the show was ending ue to the network being disbanded). So, without the conclusion to the Earth Civil War, early Season 5 was left with the telepath subplots, now stretched out and expanded. Though not the best part of B5, it wasn&#39;t terrible (certainly better than some of the one shots in the first season) though it mainly depended on if you liked or tolerated the Byron character- if you hated him, your gonna hate that stretch of the show.
----------
Still, the second half of Season 5 (where it began to get back on track) with the Centauri conflict and Londo&#39;s corronation is still among the top quality the earlier seasons achieved, and the conclusion to one of the best character arcs you will ever see in film or TV ever.

There are plenty of mitigating circumstances for the way Season 5 turned out - the fact that much of the plot had been shifted back into Season 4, the fact that the shooting schedule had been cut by a day, the loss of arguably the two most popular members of the cast, the loss of the cinematographer John C Flinn III, the fact that JMS only intended to write a fraction of the episodes and ended up writing all but one, the fact that it was on a new network and didn&#39;t want to alienate new fans, the fact that it set up threads for the intended spinoffs that fell through. Actually I&#39;m amazed that it ended up as watchable as it is. The TV movies were all divisive but only River of Souls is really not up to par. Crusade suffered massive network interference and was horribly broken even before it aired. Legend of the Rangers... I don&#39;t know, it has a nice cast and some redeeming qualities, but it was clumsy, and I agree wholeheartedly that in this day and age any new B5 will need to hit a higher standard than that to succeed. JMS can be infuriating as a writer - for every stock &#39;Damn&#39;, &#39;Get the hell out of&#39;, &#39;Give me ramming speed&#39;, &#39;if you want me, you know where to find me&#39; and &#39;As you already know&#39; you get something touching and brilliant. When he&#39;s on form he&#39;s great, when he&#39;s on autopilot it can get a little wearing, but a good actor can usually still make it work (Bruce Boxleitner was always very good at selling it).

Crusade, likewise, had tremendous potential. Unfortunately TNT ( ::patooie!:: ) royally fucked it over. If you watch the show in a proper episode order (as opposed to the mind numbing stupid order TNT first aired it in, as well as, unfortunately, the order used for the DVDs), you can see what great potential the show had, TNT interventions (like the terrible War Zone "2nd pilot") notwithstanding. ------Additionally, if you see where the show was actually heading (a couple scripts for unproduced episodes were available online a long time ago, etc), with it delving into Galen&#39;s search for left over Shadow Tech, the connected Earthforce conspiracies surrounding that Shadow Tech and the destruction of Gideon&#39;s earlier ship, the afetrmath of the Telepath War with Bester and the remnant Psi-Corp forces, etc, you can REALLY start to see what the show was capable of and how it would have contributed more solidly to the B5 universe. It was never going to be about the cure for the plague- they would have found that in Season 2. Crusade will be something that will get finished or resolved somehow, one day, in some form or another.

A mixed bag- you had the spectacular, emotional and tear-enducing In the Beginning, which is just a beautiful piece of art. Then you had the largely stand-alone Thirdspace, which gave you a good dose of action and a more horror-slanted story that was different from your usual B5 adventure. Still, I think that one was pretty solid fun. The there&#39;s A Call To Arms, which was bssicly the transition from B5 to Crusade, but despite that, this one was also pretty solid and up there with best of them. the only weak link was River of Souls, which wasn&#39;t terrible, but not particularly good either- Martin Sheen was terrbly miscast as a Soul Hunter (but that was his choice), though it did have a good dose of humor in it. Still, it was forgettable, though kind of a nice throwback to the original Soul Hunter episode. And, of course, there was the Special Edition of The Gathering pilot, but Gathering was always a weaklink and felt disconnected from the greater B5 mythos. Still, this version was superior to the original, so there was at least some point to it&#39;s contributions.
-----------
So, yeah, the TV movies, on the whole were fairly solid, though ranging from the great (ITB, ACTA), to the good (Thirdspace), to the "meh" (ROS, TG).

Yeah, this one was definitely below average, without a doubt. but I think it had potential if had gone to series and they were given to the opportunity to correct their mistakes. The script was rushed (I think it&#39;s confirmed JMS had to write it within a week), which led to problems such as the annoying overuse of the Ranger mantra ("We live for the one..." etc, was spoken at least 6-8 times), and the surprisingly suicidal mentality of expectations amongst the Ranger leadership. A loss of budget resulted in them being unable to do the weapons system they originally intended, thus forcing them to improvise that Zero-G chamber thing which obviosuly didn&#39;t work well (and, IIRC, was sad to have been the first thing to go had they gone to series). And the crew was so large that there was little time to develop them all within the space of the one TV movie psuedo-pilot.
--------------
That said, there were many good elements found within the film- some of the characters that did get a chance to develop were pretty fun (the Minbari guy in particular), the conflict resolution was unique (and a little clever, IMO) and the plot threads set up in the film (particularly The Hand) had much potential (especially if The Hand were indeed the aliens from Thirdspace, which would tie that in more closely with the rest of the universe).
----------
So, yeah, Rangers was definitely dissapointing, but I think it could have redeemed itself had it gone to series (and it most certainly would have, had it not happened to have been premiered opposite what turned out to be one of the most watched football games ever). Not to mention it was a brilliant backdoor manuever to potentially bringing back Crusade. Fate and luck would dash those aspirations ultimately, however.
--------
But, "there is always hope, only because that is the one thing no one has figured out how to kill. Yet."

I&#39;ve got to say it&#39;s refreshing to have a decent B5 discussion with people who know and love the series, since I only know of 2 other people who ever watched it and the rest dismiss it on face value or have no time for anything that&#39;s not Trek. TheSecondQuest, you make some good points... and as for my comment about Lyta&#39;s shadow/vorlon child, Leto III, it was indeed borne out of the excruciatingly dull and plodding subplot surrounding Byron. With a medical bay stocked to the gills with telepaths who&#39;ve actually got a reason to be pissed off with the ISA (having been used, like pawns, in a war) I just don&#39;t understand why this wasn&#39;t the eventual impetus for the telepath war. It would have at least tied it back in with the previous seasons and spared us those fucking moaning hippies. A wasted opportunity and, for me, too late for the later Londo/G&#39;Kar stuff to make amends... although "In The Kingdom of the Blind" was outstanding... minus those fkn hippies. And a telepathic child/adolescent, with the internal conflict of it&#39;s vorlon/shadow influenced parentage, seeking revenge against the ISA and it&#39;s former leaders&#39; son WOULD have been a far better development than what&#39;s come since. There&#39;s only so much of Londo sitting on a throne that I can take. And as for those brand new(!) "First Ones", that just so happen to have come out of hibernation, and are far more heinous than the Shadows... well... thanks for the warning, Lorien, you goat-faced git... shows how much you knew(!)

Geeze, who knew i&#39;d have so much to say about a programme that, in my mind, ended nearly a decade ago. I&#39;d love this news if it indicated I might get to see a one-eyed G&#39;Kar throttling the life out of a fading Londo... I would probably even moisten my boxers if I heard Michael O&#39;Hare was coming back... but since neither of those are going to happen the best I can hope for is Bill Mumy waving his palms about trying to look hard or Stephen Furst bumping into things and fucking bald women. Both of which I can do without.

I&#39;m surprised by how incredibly shortsighted fans of other franchises are be crapping all over this news. I&#39;m no Farscape fan but when they announced that 4-hour miniseries thing last year I jumped to be able to say "Way to go" top the fans who worked hard to show support for the series. That kind of grassroots success can only embolden others trying to show support for their favorite shows. It&#39;s thanks to DVD sales that we&#39;re seeing a change in how studios view thier product. Family Guy&#39;s strong DVD sales led to its resurrection. Would the folks who own Futurerama be doing something similar if Family Guy hadn&#39;t led the way? You can bet your bottom dollar that if/when the B5 Direct-to-DVD project is a success, other studios will seriously look at the model for their own franchises.

Actually, I think there could be a very good chance of getting Michael to do one of these short stories- especially one set on Minbar after he left B5 (or, perhaps, showing us his departure). Though I&#39;m not sure how much of that has already been told in the To Dream in the City of Sorrows novel (haven&#39;t read it yet), but I&#39;m sure there&#39;s some room in there. Though perhaps we could get one with Valen and Zathras instead (and bring full closure to Valen finding Catherine Sakai [who apparently fell through the time rift in TDITCOS, and a message found aboard a thousand year old derelict Babylon 4 in a comic mentions Valen "found her"]).
--------------
The only thing that changed about the Season 5 teep plot (besides being a series of C plots expanded into A plots) was Lyta becoming Byron&#39;s lover instead of Ivanova. Also, those events were the start of the teep war, essentially- it formed the resistance group that would begin the war against the forces the Psi-Corp was already marshalling for their own purposes.
--------------
Also, you&#39;d be surprised what could be done with Londo on the throne- check out the "Legions of Fire" trilogy, it ties together so many things from the end of Season 5 with Londo taking the keeper, the events of A Call to Arms and the Drahk&#39;s plans, the woman from In the Beginning, the "future events" glimpsed at in War Without End and Vir&#39;s ascension to the throne, etc. It&#39;s just fantastic stuff, and Londo&#39;s struggle to try and fix things without the keeper knowing are great.
----------------
Lastly, as for the "new First Ones"- I agree having another ancient race would be redundant and against the notion of the First Ones leaving in Season 4 ("the third age" and all that), that&#39;s why i really do hope they would be the Thirdspace aliens, since they were obviously something beyond even the Vorlon&#39;s capabilities to control, and thus would be outside the actual association of First Ones and Lorien, etc. Of course The Hand could just have been a deception of some kind- not being the true initiative of the show much like how the plague cure wasn&#39;t the true nature of Crusade.

What if The Hand was actually the source of the cure for Crusade? The events of A Call To Arms and Crusade would take place during the 2nd season of Rangers, IIRC, so perhaps their investigations into The Hand would result in discovering the cure for the Drahk Plague (since the Rangers were supposed to be doing scout work for possible cure sources in advance of the Excalibur), which I guess would line up as Ranger&#39;s 3rd season and Crusade&#39;s hypotehtical 2nd season (which was when the cure was going to be found).

I read "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" a couple of years ago. It does deal with Sinclair&#39;s time on Minbar but I like your thinking - a mini-movie based upon that could feature Sinclair, Marcus, Catherine, Neroon and Zathras. That would be great. It&#39;s a good read and I recommend. I actually bought Peter David&#39;s "Legions of Fire" trilogy several years ago but never got around to reading completely. Perhaps I&#39;ll dust them off and start again as I didn&#39;t get past part 1. I completely agree, tho, it was fantastic stuff, esp how it ties in with the TV arc... I guess I&#39;m just disappointed that now i&#39;ll never get the chance to see this story in live action. As posted by someone else previously, I&#39;m not happy either about arc-story being dealt with in a medium other than television while so much air time has since been given to secondary/irrelevant stuff that could easily have been dealt with in novels themselves. As for The Hand, etc, I appreciate the attempts of JMS to tie these into the main B5 lore but for me it was only ever about the Shadows and Vorlons (and their influence on the younger races). The introduction of anything else just indicates to me a regret on his part for having written them both out in the first place.

I love that! - B5 is not just one of my favorite Sci-Fi shows; it is in my top 5 of ALL TV shows. Nice to see some love here from the fans and from Merrick. To the haters; go watch your five years of Firefly (oops), Voyager, and Enterprise, because those shows provided us all with so many years of great entertainment. Or just keep gushing over BSG, of course they have still yet to provide a true season yet (22 -24 episodes). I guess that

...and no one can take a critical look at this series and tell you otherwise.
Joe&#39;s determination to get this story on the air is an amazing story by itself...in the meantime, he told some absolutely amazing stories, and he created some wonderful characters...and he was pretty approachable by fans.
On the downside, his show (and in some ways he himself) became trapped in a pretty simple story that was entirely too derivative of Tolkien. (You think the SF fans show hate! Get some Tolkien fans in here!)
For my SF money, I actually enjoyed the first season the best...IMO the series would have been much stronger if he&#39;d have let other writers handle his material in the middle seasons.

James Cameron, only with "Piranha 2" budgets. Quite remarkable is the B5 story behind the story. - As a longtime fan, as much as I would love more B5, what&#39;s that saying about never going home again?

Listen, I have nothing against B5 fans. In fact I&#39;m happy for you that there will be some new shit for ya, but this whole idea that B5 led to Battlestar Galactica etc... is crazy.
The truth is, even that one season show "Space Above and Beyond" had a bigger audience and was more of an influence on future shows.

Babylon 5 should get its props for trailblazing the arc driven show on American television Wiseguy, Murder One and Babylon Five all get my respect for this, and Babylon Five actually managed not to get cancelled for its trouble. Seasons Two and Three, when the show was in stride, were really quite good, before the hurried and cliched solutions of season four and the bizarre and disappointing (except for giving screentime to Patricia Tallman) season five. But the show was driven, to nearly the exclusion of everything else, by Londo and especially G&#39;Kar, and with Katsoulas dead whatever gas there was for more from the original cast/creator was pretty much running on fumes. And at its best Babylon Five had clunky dialogue to go with its grand arcs, and acting that, outside of the two guys above, ranged from competent (say the Garibaldi character) to "it hurts to listen to her speak" (say Claudia Christian)with more of the later than the former. Maybe worse acting, as an ensemble, than any Trek cast outside of Voyager. And every one of JMS&#39; attempts to continue the show have been League of Extraordinary Gentlemen awful. So although Babylon Five certainly doesn&#39;t warrant the hate it&#39;s getting here (I probably wouldn&#39;t even mind watching seasons 3-5 again sometime), and although it deserves a solid spot in the history of genre television for its incredibly arc driven and wideflung storyline, it&#39;s hard to believe that the medium, and tv as a whole, hasn&#39;t passed it, and probably its creator, by. And to the guy who said that Sheridan&#39;s speeches were somehow better than Kirk&#39;s? Please. Either you never saw Star Trek or you think Al Gore is a better speaker than Bill Clinton. Kirk&#39;s speech in the horrible Yangs versus Khans(sp?) episode alone would shout to silence every word Boxleitner&#39;s spoken in his career.

RenoNevada2000- I had heard Tim had died in a motorcycle accident, but I never saw much of a reaction or even response about it from JMS, so I assumed it was false.
--------------
And yeah, NASA was a big fan of B5, since it tried to be as realistic with it&#39;s designs as possible- which led to NASA&#39;s Jet Propulsion Lab advising Crusade. Additionally, NASA also asked for permission from JMS to use the Starfury ship design for potential loadlifters for the International Space Station, and recieved it (on the condition they are called Starfuries).
--------------
And though has had a couple good speeches, Sheridan&#39;s speeches upon his return from Z&#39;ha&#39;dum and his return to Earth utterly annihilate any sylable to ever emmit from Shatner&#39;s mouth. And G&#39;Kar&#39;s speeches will take anyone&#39;s to town.

I&#39;ll admit that star trek did tend to piss this trekkie off with it&#39;s "Let realiagn the phase inverter and that&#39;ll bring up the tackyons in the Warp core&#39;s cooling systems." but this babble was only really incomprehensible towards the end of TNG and predominantly in Voyager and Enterprise. Babylon 5 solution, I found in my limited viewings always had a problem that absolutely NO ONE had any brains on how to fix. Except for 1 character, and then everyone would agree and have the same idea. I&#39;m trying to say the show was preachy. The worst kind of preachy. You know, where it&#39;s right, and me watching is wrong. But it&#39;s ok if you like Babylon 5. It&#39;s ok if you prefer it over star Trek. Really it is. hahahaha

It sounds very clever, and I&#39;m glad NASA are so discerning, but the more I think about it the more puzzled I get. To the best of my knowledge, NASA hasn&#39;t yet reached the stage where they&#39;re negotiating jump gate routes, stamping out brushfire galactic conflicts, wrestling with the consequences of telepathy and immortality sera, or waging a desperate last-ditch war against an atavistic and ancient alien evil. And if they are engaged in any or all of these activities, they should damn well justify their budget by coming clean and letting the rest of the world know about it..

I was there too and everything he said was accurate but I specifically remember JMS saying "That&#39;s billion...with a B." I remember thinking that was outlandish but that he must know what he was talking about. Anyway, thanks for the report Nuclear Marine.

But this .. this, this, this is like being nibbled to death by .. what are those Earth creatures called? Feathers, long bill, webbed feet .. go &#39;quack&#39;?"
"Cats."
"Cats. I&#39;m being nibbled to death by cats."

"&#39;I try to work with writers whom I can train into the BABYLON 5 mindset,&#39; says Straczynski. &#39;A lot of them come in and they tend to write STAR TREK. You have to grab them and shake them a few times. It&#39;s not their fault, it&#39;s just 25 years of exposure. If a story would work as well in the TREK universe as it would here, it&#39;s not a BABYLON 5 story. It has to have an edge to it. It&#39;s got to have something different about it. It&#39;s not just about reversing the tachyon field to neutralize a pulsar and save the star system.&#39;" (continued below:)

"&#39;I&#39;ll never allow a script to come in saying &#39;TECH,&#39; &#39; adds Straczynski of the tendency among STAR TREK staff to write scenes using technical language as merely a stream of &#39;TECH,TECH,TECHs&#39; in their first-draft scripts, which are later replaced by the staff&#39;s science and technical advisors. &#39;The technology must be a part of the storyline.&#39;"

"[But] this whole idea that B5 led to Battlestar Galactica etc... is crazy. The truth is, even that one season show &#39;Space Above and Beyond&#39; had a bigger audience and was more of an influence on future shows."............................Coop, lay off the meth-pipe, man. Seriously.

Funny that should be mentioned- as much as I enjoyed that show, it should be pointed out that SAAB actually included images of Babylon 5 on it&#39;s DVD menus...so, who inspired who more, I wonder? ::)

Well the difference beteween say B5 and BSG is that BSg has a feeling of being made up as they go along. Where as B5 was crafted completely from the begining. The way one would write a novel. A begining where you set things up. A middle where you have the heart of the story. And the end where you have the resolution and what comes after. This was slightly screwed up by tv executives and the business of TV. The 5th year was supposed to be different but they thought they were going to be canceled so they ended things in the 4th year and the 5th was all what comes after. I recently put on the 4th year of B5 and it still was interesting and great story telling. Even with it&#39;s late 90&#39;s FX. I own all but " The Rangers ". I really don&#39;t know what happened there but it asn&#39;t up to the quality of other things in the B5 universe. I really wish " Crusade " had been able to run on it&#39;s own ( as it was much better than the Rangers ) but it to fell prey to TV business concerns. If this is quality stuff I look forward to it! More B5 before more of it&#39;s actors pass away!

Did you notice that the Star Trek people ripped-off the look of Excaliber&#39;s crew costumes from Crusade and used similar looking costumes for Star Trek: Enterprise? Further, shortly after airing Crusade, JMS signed a deal with Nasa to cross promote Crusade...When the show was abruptly cancelled, Star Trek: Enterprise signed a similar deal with the folks at Nasa. I could go on, but the list of rip-offs is too numerous, and too pathetic to continue...While on the subject of rip-offs, I&#39;ll tell you, if Star Trek was still on the air, its casts would be traveling through a Star Door every week to different alien worlds...The Borg would now look like humans so they could infultraite the Federation, and of course, the Federation would be destroyed by a surprise Borg attack, forcing Federation survivors to flee across space in search of a missing 13th Colony!!! Oh wait a minute, that sounds alot like Star Gate and Battlestar Galactica!!!

Season 1 of B5 was close to dreadful. The acting was awkward or bad, and the stories only so-so. It&#39;s one highlight is the B4 time travel episode. Season 2 improved greatly, 3 was awesome. 4 started out great, with some of the stonger stories, then kind of petered out half way through when they prematurely ended the Shadow War. Season 5 should not be spoken of. It is the only one I don&#39;t own on DVD. At its best, B5 topped all the other shows. But it often had poor acting, especially in its minor cast, and they could never do humor well. B5 was best when it was dark, and following the Shadow War. But it is far from perfect. Probably the most consistent series mentioned here was DS9. And it was B5 that made them take up a long, continuing story arc. There, I have spoken the truth. You may now go about your puny lives.

"and they could never do humor well" --------- I have one word for you: Zathras.----"Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people&#39;s needs. Sad life. probably have sad death too. But, at least there is symetry."; "There is infinite time. You are finit. Zathras is finite, and this- is wrong too. No. Never use that."------ Another: Londo. ------"When I said it was cold in my quarters I didn&#39;t mean &#39;Oh, it&#39;s a bit chilly in here, I think I&#39;ll throw another blanket on the bed&#39;- NO! I said it WAS COLD- as in &#39;Oh! My arm has suddenly snapped off! and shattered on the floor!"-----"I swear [these bugs] are evolving before my very eyes. If you see anything this big with eight legs coming your way, let me know. I have to kill it before it develops language skills."-----and, a little Macrus for flavor: "You can get more with a kind word and a two-by-four than you can with just a kind word."

I gotta say that with B5 the aliens looked cooler and more like real aliens, or at least better than almost all Star Trek aliens. I emailed JMS one time and asked why he didn&#39;t have the aliens in B5 speak in their own native language and use subtitles--and he actually responded! I doubt anyone affiliated with Star Trek would have ever given me the time of day. So JMS is the man. Now if he&#39;d only publish on my web site (that -other- POD book publishing site) I&#39;d give him a million bucks...

sad to say, announced recently by jms, he will no longer participate on the moderated B5 newsgroup. the moderators confirm that a particularly vicious troll has been stalking him in the discussions he participates in, assuming multiple e-mail identities to continually harrass and disrupt the flow of conversation between him and the fans. the moderators say they can do nothing about the troll, since, if they ban him, he has stated that he will continually rejoin the group under a fake e-mail address. there&#39;s nothing you can do with that dedicated kind of viciousness except walk away. which he did.

I certainly have no love for trolls, but the &#39;mods&#39; of the newsgroup in question certainly sucked the life out of that newsgroup...I remember well the days before the existance of the moderated group...one episode that I remember involved a fan talking about his (friendly) encounter with Claudia Christenson at a Ren-fest type event (something about a hand on a leg), and both the mods (and to a lesser extent JMS) called this guy a liar...Joe at least had the decency to &#39;verify&#39; the story with CC, and later offered a half-hearted apology for the over-reaction...no such retraction from the &#39;mods&#39;...I always found the establishment of the moderated newsgroup completely ironic, given the nature of the &#39;Nightwatch&#39; storyline in B5...but some folks just don&#39;t get it.

...back in the day. (Maybe he still is, I haven&#39;t been in years.) I once made a comment about Garibaldi&#39;s relationship with Londo and he was kind enough to say I&#39;d noticed something about his character he hadn&#39;t realized himself! Needless to say, I was insufferably pleased with myself...

who says the internets don&#39;t move at the speed of light? I check the b5 newsgroup once a week for interesting threads. who would have thought that they&#39;d get that thing patched up within hours? thanks again, this is very good news.

Well for me it gives the storyline a sense of lack of direction. The documentary style that serves it well in photography doesn&#39;t do so well in story telling. The advantage of writing a novel that recounts events is that the writer knows what happened and can recount events in a logical structure. As it happens tends to ignore what&#39;s to come and you run the risk of doing things that don&#39;t make sense later. B5 never had that feeling. As a matter of fact it was interesting to see how the puzzel pieces fit later on. Don&#39;t get me wrong. I like BSG it&#39;s just I think they could plan ahead more and have a more cohesive storyline.